Indian officials Tuesday made public a proposal for a national nuclear doctrine under which only the elected prime minister would have the power to authorize a nuclear strike and India would use such weapons only if attacked by another nuclear power.

India appeared likely to call new elections after Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi gave up Sunday on trying to form a new government. Ousted Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee met with President Kocheril Raman Narayanan, but it did not appear that the ceremonial chief of state had given Vajpayee the nod to try again at forming a government. If so, that would force India to call its third election in as many years.

India's Congress party, thwarted in its bid to form a minority government, sought more time Friday to win key support from a clutch of regional and communist parties. Four parties from a patchwork of regional, caste-based and leftist groups on which Sonia Gandhi's Congress was relying, would not declare their support. Gandhi said after meeting President K.R.

India's Hindu nationalist government resigned Saturday after losing a confidence vote by a single ballot, a margin that signaled continued political turmoil as Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi prepared to try to form the next government. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee gave his resignation to President Kocheril Raman Narayanan but agreed to stay on as caretaker until a new government is formed. "I accept the house verdict with all humility," Vajpayee said.

A golden bus crossed from India to Pakistan on Saturday bearing an old rival and the hopes of a subcontinent tired of war. Prime Minster Atal Behari Vajpayee rode in from India to meet his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, spurring talk that a new trans-border bus route could open an era of friendliness between their historically hostile countries. Vajpayee and Sharif planned two days of meetings aimed at bridging the differences between the world's two newest nuclear-armed states.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited a violence-hit region in western India on Sunday and demanded severe punishment for anyone attacking houses of worship, after Hindu militants burned or demolished churches there. "Exemplary punishment should be awarded to perpetrators of such crimes," he said in Ahwa, a town in the western state of Gujarat, a region that has been marked by more than 100 acts of violence against Christians in the past year.

India's right-wing ruling party was routed in elections in three states, according to early results Saturday, suffering a major setback in its first political test since forming a coalition government eight months ago. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee acknowledged the defeat for his Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, but he insisted the results would have no bearing on the stability of his 19-party coalition. The election was held Wednesday, but final results were not expected until today.

In a sign of spreading international protest over India's recent nuclear weapons tests, the World Bank postponed action Tuesday on more than $800 million in development loans to New Delhi after the United States and its allies threatened to block them. Without specifically mentioning the nuclear testing issue, the bank issued a statement saying it had decided to put off any vote on the four lending packages after several of its board members requested the delay.

India's Hindu nationalist party narrowly won its first vote of confidence in Parliament on Saturday after leaders promised to moderate its aggressive religious policies to embrace a broad-based government. The vote means that the new coalition government put together by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, can stay in power--a relief to a country that has seen five governments in the last two years.

Atal Behari Vajpayee, the country's new Hindu nationalist prime minister, took office after assembling a diverse Cabinet. "I have a pledge to redeem, I have a promise to fulfill," Vajpayee told reporters as he walked to his new office in New Delhi after he and 42 ministers were sworn in. Vajpayee, a 71-year-old moderate member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, kept the Foreign Ministry for himself.